Muzzleloading firearms operate in a traditional manner employed before the development of integrated ammunition cartridges, and remain popular among some hunters, target shooters, and historical enthusiasts. A muzzleloading rifle is loaded by insertion of powder and a bullet into the muzzle (forward aperture) of the rifle for each shot. Modern muzzleloaders employ pre-manufactured cylindrical pellets of gunpowder to provide a convenient and carefully-sized charge. The bullet normally includes a sabot, which is a plastic cup that encompasses the sides and rear of the bullet, to facilitate insertion of the bullet with minimal friction and force. Without a sabot, the bullet must be large enough to engage the barrel rifling upon firing, which means that the bullet must be forcibly deformed by the rifling as it is inserted, requiring unwanted force. With a sabot, the plastic readily deforms to engage the rifling on insertion, and engages the rifling on discharge to rotate the bullet to provide stable flight. The sabot peels off the bullet after it leaves the muzzle.
Existing muzzleloading requires several steps. First, the shooter must obtain the powder pellets from the package in which they are purchased. A typical pellet is a straight cylinder having a central axial bore. A typical package is a box in which a matrix of pellets are packed, stacked two deep. It can be difficult to extract pellets by hand, especially with cold or clumsy fingers. Consequently, the manufacturer includes a “pipe-cleaner” tool in each box, so that it can be inserted in the bore of one or two pellets in a stack, with friction forces drawing the pellets from the box. The pellets can then be inserted in the barrel muzzle, and the pipe-cleaner removed for future use. This process is cumbersome and inconvenient, and becomes even more difficult if the pipe-cleaner is lost.
In addition, existing loading techniques present a risk of potentially dangerous loading errors. For instance, a shooter loading powder pellets loosely contained within a box may become distracted, and load more pellets than desired. This can lead to excessive charges than can damage the rifle, and endanger the shooter and bystanders.
After the loading of the powder pellets, the bullet, encased in its sabot sleeve, is loaded into the muzzle. For a shot in which two powder pellets are employed, three different items must be loaded into the muzzle, requiring significant time for each shot. This a particular disadvantage when a rapid second shot is desired, because two more pellets and a saboted bullet must be obtained from their carrying containers and loaded into the rifle.
Another concern with current muzzleloaders is that powder pellets may have a directionality. Some pellets are different on one end than the other, with powder of a type that facilitates ignition on one end that must be to the rear, adjacent the ignition source, facing away from the muzzle. Manual insertion of pellets taken from a container in which they are loosely received risks that such pellets are inserted backward, leading to a failure-to-fire malfunction or inconsistent performance.
The present invention overcomes the limitations of the prior art by providing a sabot for a muzzleloading firearm. The sabot has a cylindrical body aligned with a bore axis. The body has a sleeve portion extending in a first direction adapted to receive a bullet. A post extends from the body in a second direction opposite the first direction. The post may have a cross sectional profile that has articulated surfaces, and which may define channels along the post. A powder pellet defining a bore may be closely received on the post, with an interference fit retaining the pellet on the post. The sabot may be employed to extract a pellet from a storage container, by inserting the post in the pellet bore to extract the pellet from the container. The sabot may be part of an assembly including a bullet and one or more pellets, which may be loaded into the muzzle of a rifle as a single unit.